Chickpea Chicken Soup

In case you’ve never checked out the sidebar category “Link Love”, you should probably do that… go ahead, I’ll wait.

Jessica over at How Sweet It Is (or How Sweet Eats) is a recipe superhero. Her photos are vibrant, her recipes are tasty, and her humor keeps me going back to her blog to see what she’s up to in the kitchen.

I was trying to figure out what the heck I was going to make for dinner last Thursday, so I did what I do best. I scoured the internet for recipes with ingredients that I already had because I’m lazy and didn’t want to go food shopping. I found a bunch of boring recipes for chicken and lots of pork loin dishes blah blah blah. I was craving something different. The weather in Connecticut is cooling off and feeling very autumnal. In other words, I wanted soup.

I scoured Jessica’s recipe page until I found one that I

A) had most of the ingredients for

B) Sounded good

C) Wasn’t a 10,000 step process to make

I ended up making her Chickpea Chicken Soup recipe. It is made with bacon. Enough said. Click the link to see her page for the original recipe. I tweaked it just a little bit. My changes and weird commentary are in red

Chickpea Chicken Soup

serves approximately 6-8, depending on your serving sizes

4 slices thick-cutturkey bacon, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

1/2 red pepper, chopped didn’t have any peppers

1 cup mushrooms, roughly chopped Mr. FSL surprised me by cooking dinner the night before and used the mushrooms. They never made it into the soup, but I’m sure they would be fantastic in it!

2 cups 1 whole bag raw baby spinach

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon smoked paprika - I just had the regular kind.

1/2 teaspoon cumin

23 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 teaspoon seasoned salt I forgot to add this in because my brain is fried by the time I’m cooking dinner.

1 cupbag chopped baby carrots

23 celery stalks, chopped

1 25-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed I never rinse them because I’m lazy

24 ounces4 cans low-sodium chicken stock

1 can of corn (drained)

2 chicken bullion cubes dissolved in 2 cups of very hot water

Crushed red pepper

Plain old salt & pepper to taste

Preheat a large pot on medium heat. Add chopped bacon and fry until brown and crispy.

While bacon is frying, chop vegetables and cook chicken. I didn’t read this part first, so 1/2 way though, I was cooking all of the chicken. If you have cooked chicken hanging around your fridge, use that. You have 3 options for the chicken – you can either bake it while the bacon + veggies are sauteing, you can pan-fry it while the bacon + veggies are sauteing (I did that & it took a while), or you can use pre-made/leftover shredded chicken in the soup…um yeah. That’s the best option. Either way, take the time while the bacon is frying to get the chicken ready. Here’s what my crazy operation looked like!

Once bacon is done, remove and drain on a paper towel. Be careful on this part to have self-control. While waiting for the chicken to cook, I ate all of the bacon … don’t judge.

Once I chopped up all of the veggies, I realized that I’m going to need a bigger pot (and make more bacon **blushes**). I tossed new turkey bacon into my Big Mamma stockpot. I failed to realize that it is NOT nonstick. Yeah.

Keeping heat on medium, add onions, mushrooms and peppers to bacon grease and saute until soft, about 5-8 minutes.

Add garlic, spinach, paprika and cumin and stir for 60 seconds.

Turn heat down to low and add chickpeas, celery, carrots and chicken.

Dump in the chicken & corn.

stock and simmer for 30 minutes. My carrots were still too firm, so I boiled it for an other 10 to 15 minutes until they were softer.

Right before serving, add bacon back into soup. My bacon was in teeny tiny pieces and at this point since I clearly don’t read the directions when I cook, realized that the bacon was boiling in the pot this entire time along with everything else. What can I say guys, I’m a genius Garnish with parmesan cheese and serve with toast if desired. Season with salt and pepper if needed. I found I needed no extra salt. I served mine with cheesy garlic bread & discovered that this soup is even better without grated cheese. I NEVER think food is better without cheese, but this soup is.

Well, there ya have it. An epic fail in the recipe following department, and the soup still turned out frikkin delicious! I ate it for lunch for the next 3 days and Mr. FSL kept saying “MMMM, this is really great broth!”. Thanks Jess. This recipe was so good, that I royally effed it up and it still was amazing! Imagine how good it will be if you follow the real directions?!